Military Retirement:

Second Careers

Coinciding with Veteran’s Day, we just completed an interesting study about the best places in the U.S. for military retirees to start a second career. Since most veterans retire from service in their 30′s or 40′s, they have plenty of time to start a new professional chapter in their lives.

So what are the best places to enter the civilian job sector? To help us find out, we partnered with USAA (a financial services provider) and Military.com (the largest military and veteran membership organization). We looked at factors such as affordability, unemployment rate, prevalence of military skill related jobs, and number of veteran-owned businesses. But we didn’t stop there.

We also considered the number of federal government jobs, the volume of DoD contracts, the number of small businesses, the proximity of military installations and amenities, presence of VA hospitals, military pension taxation, presence of colleges and universities, sales tax, climate, and crime rate.

Here’s the overall top 10:

Oklahoma City, OK

Norfolk, VA

Richmond, VA

Austin, TX

San Antonio, TX

Madison, WI

Philadelphia, PA

Raleigh, NC

Omaha, NE

Manchester, NH

But that’s not all. Some people prefer to live in a big city, whereas others prefer the easygoing pace of a small town. Still others like the combination that a mid-sized city offers. So we broke down our results into large, medium, and small metro areas. You can get all the here.